Fort Macleod officials are “cautiously optimistic” the province will build the police college here.
A meeting last week with government officials got town council reassurance the college will be built here, but no firm date.
“One of the things that gave us some optimism leaving the room is that Premier Stelmach told them to get this project done,” Mayor Shawn Patience said. “However, there is still no money no commitment. Our position is very cautiously optimistic.”
Patience, councillors Brian Reach and Sharon Monical, Town of Fort Macleod municipal manager Barry Elliott and economic development officer Martin Ebel went Feb. 23 to the Legislature in Edmonton. Livingstone-Macleod MLA Evan Berger had arranged a meeting with new Solicitor General Frank Oberle and Treasury Board president Lloyd Snelgrove.
“It was a very frank meeting, very candid,” Patience said. “We felt like we had to say what was on our mind, what was on the minds of people in Fort Macleod and southern Alberta.”
What is on the minds of people in this town and district, Patience said, is a growing sense of frustration the province has not followed through with a commitment it made in 2006 to build the Alberta Police and Peace Officer Training Centre in Fort Macleod.
“It is becoming more than an issue about the police college,” Patience said. “It is becoming a question of integrity.”
The Fort Macleod delegation was blunt in its assessment that if the government does not get construction started before the 2012 provincial election, it will cost the Progressive Conservatives at the polls.
“It will be an election issue,” Patience said.
The Fort Macleod delegation told Oberle and Snelgrove people in southern Alberta are frustrated by the delay in building the college where 1,400 police and peace officer recruits are to be trained each year. When Fort Macleod in 2006 won the bid as the site of the college, the government promised construction would start in 2007.
Patience and the other Fort Macleod officials told Oberle and Snelgrove the town, as well as businesses and individuals, made investments and business decisions based on that promise.
“When we bid and the other 30 communities bid, there was the belief that this project would come to life very quickly,” Patience said.
At the meeting the Fort Macleod delegation rejected the government’s claims there was no money to build the college, pointing out the province found $2-billion for carbon capture and took on $6-billion in new debt for capital projects.
Patience expressed concern the police college was not in the 2010 provincial budget, it is not in the government’s three-year capital plan and is not even mentioned in the solicitor general’s 2008-’09 annual report.
“The fact it is not on the capital list tells me it is not a priority for them,” Patience said. “And it should be.”
During the two-hour meeting at the Legislature the Fort Macleod delegation was told the operational model was not sustainable, and that the province would not subsidize the college.
“We were very surprised to hear that,” Patience said. “We assumed that model was at least basically complete.”
Patience disputed that assertion, pointing out the project was engineered and a project manager put in place in 2005 and curriculum development started in 2006.
After the province made its call for a P3 partner to build the college, it hired Price Waterhouse Coopers from England to adjust the operational model to make it more sustainable, which boosted projected costs to $250-million.
Oberle also raised the issue the province does not have formal commitments from police forces to use the college.
“I don’t know that they’ve ever been asked for a formal commitment,” Patience said, pointing out police chiefs from across the province have been part of the college’s technical and design team, which indicates a commitment to the project.
Finally, the government officials made the point no one was interested in the P3 project.
Once again, Fort Macleod officials disputed the claim, pointing out nine companies submitted bids when the request for proposals went out. The P3 call failed, Patience said, because the government was not willing to put any money into the project.
“That P3 process was doomed to fail,” Patience said. “Under that guise that’s really a P2, isn’t it?”
The Fort Macleod delegation reminded Oberle and Snelgrove that a college where police would receive standard training came out of the 1999 Alberta Justice Summit, and that the project was the government’s idea, not Fort Macleod’s plan.
“It didn’t just fall out of the sky,” Patience said.
Oberle asked the Fort Macleod delegation what it wanted from the province.
“We told him we wanted a commitment that construction will begin on this project before we go back to the polls in this province,” Patience said.
The Fort Macleod delegation came away without a firm commitment and perhaps as many questions as answers, but Patience said there is reason for optimism — even if only of the cautious variety.
“Frank Oberle said he would do whatever he could to get this thing going,” Patience said. “I take him at his word.”
Plans are in the works for a meeting in Fort Macleod at which Oberle will address the public.